‘Dragonward’ is Part Resource Management, Part Old-School RPG, and It’s… Rather Odd

In this world, in this day and glorious age of video games, there are role-playing games with a ton of depth, ones that span hundreds of hours featuring super thrilling encounters and gripping stories. There are those, and then… there’s Dragonward. Not thereby saying that this is a bad game, but it does seem to bear an uncanny resemblance to the likes of Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest, in how restricted everything is. Oh, and while it features a complete lack of damsels in distress, there is a mighty fearsome dragon to slay at least!

All that said, I do like how its creator defines the protagonist: on one side, he/she is “a newbie traveler”, and yet, he/she has been tasked with… slaying the dragon, saving the entire realm in the process. Exactly what makes him/her capable of this task, and why he/she is the only one able/willing to even try? So many questions, so few (read: zero) answers! See, while the game’s page does feature a bit of information, none of it really describes how the game plays. Or maybe it does?

It does after all note how the player will be doing plenty walking, making various choices along the way, potentially losing everything to chance… and other oddities. Interesting? Hard to say, really, although far as I can tell, Dragonward just might intentionally be less than the sum of it parts, based on the design of the gameplay checklist. A list which, unsurprisingly, ends with ‘Beat a fearsome dragon’. Yeah. Provided you don’t mess up and die at some point prior, of course.